Jan Whitaker's Consumer Society

What the reviewers said ...

House & Garden:
“Looking for something more rewarding than reading tea leaves but just as much fun? Dip into Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn. ... The book is both informative and clear-eyed, and leavened with wonderful illustrations."

Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe:
“Enlightenment – wondrous revelation, in fact – has come in the shape of Jan Whitaker’s Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn: A Social History of the Tea Room Craze in America. Here is a real contribution to social history, one that disperses the cozy fug that surrounds our present notion of the tea room, an institution that we associate with homey clutter and a certain comfortable dowdiness.”

Ian Marlowe, Tea: A Magazine:
"Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn (there was one, incidentally), is such a good read – informative, enlightening, and often amusing. ... a superb job on the research, ... will stand as a great reference tool. The excellent illustrations and photographs perfectly complement her text."

Margaret Flanagan, Booklist:
“Readers will relish this irresistible slice of American popular culture.”

Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn

Strangely enough, tea rooms didn't always serve afternoon tea, and their guests were equally likely to order coffee. The underlying meaning of tea room, perhaps, was a women-friendly message that said "welcome" at a time when many eating places were male strongholds. Tea rooms were extremely popular with women in the first decades of the 20th century, both as businesses and as places to eat.

Selected Works

A round-the-world tour of major department stores from their 19th-century origins to their continual reinventions in the 21st. Emphasizing the well known stores of France and less well known examples in Germany.